When World War II ended in Europe in May 1945, all the anti-Fascist parties formed a predominantly northern government led by the Resistance hero and Party of Action leader Ferruccio Parri. The CLNs continued to administer the northern regions and the larger northern factories for a short time. Up to 15,000 Fascists were purged or killed, and in some areas (such as Emilia and Tuscany) reprisals continued through 1946. Women “collaborators” had their heads shaved and were paraded through the streets. A commission was set up to purge Fascists throughout the country. (A similar body had been operating in the south since 1943.) The purges caused much alarm, as virtually anybody with a job in the public sector had had to be a member of the Fascist Party. Soon there was an anti-purge backlash, supported by the Liberals. In reality, the purges were short-lived and superficial, and even leading Fascists were able to benefit from a series of amnesties, the most important of which was backed by the Communist minister of justice, Togliatti. In November 1945 Parri was forced to resign and was replaced by the Christian Democratic leader, Alcide De Gasperi, who formed a more moderate—and “Roman,” or southern—interparty government. It soon gave up attempts at a purge, returned the large industrial firms to their previous owners, and replaced the partisan administrators in the north with ordinary state officials. In general, the Italian purges went much less far than those in Germany, and there was considerable continuity in many areas, including the judiciary, the police force, and the body of legislation created in the 1920s and ’30s.

In May 1946 King Victor Emmanuel III finally formally abdicated. His son briefly became King Umberto II, but the royal family was forced to leave the country a month later when a referendum decided in favour of a republic by 54 percent of the votes cast. (When the new constitution was adopted the following year, it stated that no male members of the Savoy family could live in Italy; the rule was rescinded in 2002.) Many southerners, including 80 percent of Neapolitans, voted for the monarchy, but the centre and north opted overwhelmingly for the republic. The “May king,” his father, and the monarchy in general had been punished not only for supporting Mussolini but also for their cowardly behaviour in the face of German occupation.

At the same time, a Constituent Assembly was elected by universal suffrage—including women for the first time—to draw up a new constitution. The three largest parties—the Christian Democrats, Socialists, and Communists—took three-fourths of the votes and seats and dominated the assembly. The Christian Democrats, with more than one-third of the votes and seats, began their postwar dominance as the most powerful party, although the Liberals, whose deputies included several constitutional lawyers, had a major impact on the new constitution, as did the Communists and Socialists. Over the next three years, the assembly discussed (in 170 sessions) what form the new Italian state should take, in a climate of democratic debate and collaboration. The constitution was finally ready and signed in December 1947 and took effect on Jan. 1, 1948.

The Constitution of the Republic of Italy established a parliamentary system of government with two elected houses (Chamber of Deputies and Senate). It also guaranteed civil and political rights and established an independent judiciary, a constitutional court with powers of judicial review, and the right of citizens’ referendum. Many of these measures, however, were not implemented for several years. The Constitutional Court was not set up until 1955, and the first abrogative referendum was held only in 1974. The president was to be elected by parliament and had few real powers. The electoral system had a high level of proportional representation. Legislation had to pass through both elected chambers, but decrees could be issued by the Council of Ministers. The 1929 Lateran Treaty with the church was recognized in a Communist-inspired compromise. Autonomous regional governments were promised and were soon operating in the outlying zones—Sicily, Sardinia, Valle d’Aosta, Trentino–Alto Adige (including South Tirol), and (after 1963) Friuli–Venezia Giulia—inhabited by populations with linguistic or ethnic differences from those in the rest of Italy. In short, the constitution was an “anti-Fascist” document, providing for weak governments and individual liberty—exactly the opposite of what Mussolini had attempted.

The Cold War political order

In 1947 the Cold War began to influence Italian politics. De Gasperi visited the United States in January 1947 and returned with $150 million in aid. He had excluded the Communists and their allies, the Socialists, from his government the previous May both to placate the Vatican and the conservative south and to ensure that much-needed U.S. aid continued. As parliamentary elections approached, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall threatened that aid would be cancelled if the Communists and Socialists came to power.

In the campaign leading up to the first parliamentary elections of the new republic in April 1948, the United States provided huge backing for the Christian Democrats and their Liberal, Social Democratic, and Republican partners, including funding for party propaganda. Anti-Communist and anti-Catholic propaganda dominated the Christian Democrat campaign. Numerous civic committees were formed throughout Italy to get out the anti-Communist vote. The Christian Democrats, also backed by the church, won more than 48 percent of the vote and more than half the seats. The Communist-Socialist alliance won 31 percent of the overall vote and was the biggest vote-getter only in the “Red Belt” central regions of Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, and Umbria. An extraordinary 92 percent of Italians who were qualified to vote did so.

The election dashed the hopes of many former Resistance fighters for radical change. One more key event was to follow in 1948. In July the popular Communist Party leader, Togliatti, was shot by an isolated right-winger on the steps of parliament. Togliatti survived, but the assassination attempt sparked off strikes and demonstrations all over Italy. In some areas, such as Genoa and Tuscany, Communist supporters seemed to put into practice a plan for revolution, taking over tram lines and occupying key communication centres. Togliatti and Communist leaders called for calm, and after a week the movement petered out. The Christian Democrats accused the Communists of preparing an insurrection to overthrow a democratic government, and the spectre of a Communist coup d’état hung over Italian politics for years to come. Those who had kept their arms after the war saw their hopes of revolution disappear. The Communists continued to elaborate an “Italian road to socialism” that ruled out violent insurrection and called for progressive reforms.

Another effect of the 1948 election was the division of the trade union movement into three competing federations, the “red” (Communist and Socialist) Italian General Confederation of Labour, the “white” (Catholic and Christian Democratic) Italian Confederation of Workers’ Trade Unions, and the moderate Italian Labour Union. These divisions were to be overcome only briefly in the waves of strikes after 1969.

Italian politics set for the next 40 years into its “Cold War” mold. The Christian Democrats, backed by U.S. military and financial muscle, shared power and patronage with their smaller pro-Western coalition partners. They had a strong social and religious base in northern regions, could count on anti-Communist sentiment in the south, appealed to peasant landowners and women voters everywhere, won about 40 percent of the vote at successive elections, and held the key posts in government, including that of prime minister. The Socialist Party broke off its alliance with the Communists in the late 1950s and began to cooperate with the Christian Democrats. Vested interests blocked the ambitious reform programs promised by the Socialists time and again, but the centre-left administrations under Amintore Fanfani in the late 1950s and early 1960s managed to pass important measures in the fields of education reform, nationalization, and public housing. Beginning in 1963, under Nenni, the Socialists joined centre-left coalition governments, acquiring control of some of the key ministries and public-sector enterprises. The Christian Democrat Aldo Moro led several such coalition governments during the mid-1960s.

The Communists, excluded from central government, gradually made themselves more respectable but never quite shook off their Soviet links. They won 25 to 30 percent of the vote (reaching a peak of 34 percent in 1976), were particularly strong among industrial workers, agricultural labourers, and sharecroppers, ran local (and, from the 1970s, regional) governments in central Italy, and controlled the major trade unions. Even so, international factors dominated domestic politics and outweighed the old Resistance anti-Fascist alliance in a system known as blocked pluralism or polarized pluralism.

Parties and party factions

All the major Italian parties had large memberships (the Communists had more than two million until 1956, the Christian Democrats almost the same by the early 1970s), recruited from organizations such as Catholic Action, cooperatives, and trade unions. These organizations often provided tangible benefits—jobs, disability pensions, and cheap holidays—to their members. Distinct subcultures—based on a wide range of institutions, including newspapers, bars, theatres, and schools—grew up around each major party. The “white” subculture dominated parts of the south and northeast; the “red” subculture prevailed in Emilia, Tuscany, and Umbria, as well as the industrial heartlands of working-class Turin, Milan, and Genoa. Every city had its “red,” “white,” and “black” (neofascist) zones.

Most parties were groupings of organized factions, each with its own leaders, deputies, regional or ideological base, sources of finance, and journals. Within each party, and in particular within the Christian Democratic Party, these factions contended for power and for control of lucrative firms and agencies in the public sector to secure financial backing and jobs for supporters. One of the key reasons why governments between 1945 and 1994 were short-lived, with an average life of 11 months, was that governments had to be reshuffled regularly in order to allow different faction leaders to obtain posts, partly due to an electoral system that was so highly proportional. Another reason for the frequent changes was the need to form new coalitions excluding the neofascists and the Communists, who could never be allowed to govern in the Cold War world. The constitution also allowed for frequent and often inexplicable government “crises” that often ended with very similar governments forming and reforming. Giulio Andreotti alone presided over seven governments.

Government instability also stemmed from secret voting in parliament, which enabled deputies from dissatisfied factions within the coalition parties to bring down governments without attracting blame. However, instability was more apparent than real—top politicians often held the key government posts semipermanently—and it was mitigated by the secretaries of the leading parties, whose role it was to negotiate acceptable deals among faction leaders. Indeed, the party secretary was sometimes more significant than the prime minister, since the latter had no direct mandate from the electorate and was often not even the most prominent member of a party. Despite periodic shifts in the composition of the government, the same group of parties, dominated by the Christian Democrats, remained in power in the postwar period.

The Christian Democrats had to find coalition partners after 1953, when they lost their absolute majority in parliament. The need for coalition government gave exaggerated power to the smaller coalition parties, who could demand key ministries and benefits. In addition, the option of allying with the monarchists or the small but stable neofascist party, the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano; MSI), was blocked by the anti-Fascist consensus among the major parties and in the country at large. When the Christian Democrats tried to bring the MSI into the coalition, they faced mass demonstrations, as at Genoa in 1960. The neofascists remained “untouchable” until the 1990s.

At parliamentary elections voters could select not only a party but also particular candidates from that party. Deputies therefore needed to win favours for constituents, which could include suitable pieces of legislation or pressuring ministers or managers of state enterprises—themselves often political appointees. The state sector of the economy, already large in 1945, and the welfare services were both expanded after the war, and the new jobs were often given to party members or sympathizers. In turn, state firms financed the parties or particular factions of the parties. In many areas, especially in the south, party-controlled agencies came to dominate economic and social activity. The leading politicians used patronage to build power bases in particular regions, such as Fanfani did in Tuscany and Andreotti in Sicily. Local government could rarely operate without favours and finance from central, party-controlled agencies. The civil service, never very prestigious, was bypassed by politicians and government agencies and became increasingly demoralized.

Clientelism and patronage penetrated all areas of political, social, and cultural life. These features were strongest in the south, in part because of the domination of the Christian Democratic Party in that part of the country. As a result, southerners increasingly predominated in government posts, even in the north. State employees received generous benefits, often without real controls, and some public pensions allowed for retirement after only 20 years of service. This proved a huge drain on public finances. A series of little laws, or leggine, determined the precise distribution of state resources, jobs, and taxes among parties and factions, including those in the opposition, in a system known as partitocrazia (“partyocracy”). Although this system was obviously corrupt, it commanded a broad public consensus, and there were few Italians who did not participate in some way in the system. In the worst cases, in parts of the south, the links between organized crime, political patronage, and government contracts were built up and maintained throughout the postwar period. This brought the destruction of many of the most beautiful cities of Italy through the construction of vast swaths of ugly cement housing. The so-called “rape of Palermo,” under Mafia–Christian Democratic control in the 1960s, was one of the most tragic examples. Parties and their clients also siphoned money and resources meant to aid victims of natural disasters, such as earthquakes.

Foreign policy

The Cold War political system had one major advantage. Italian foreign policy ceased to be adventurous. De Gasperi had to accept the harsh Treaty of Paris in 1947, in which Italy gave up all African colonies and relinquished some Alpine territories to France and the Dodecanese islands to Greece. But thereafter Italy joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and became a respectable member of the Western alliance. NATO—in effect, the United States—guaranteed Italy’s political stability and security. Italy also joined the European Coal and Steel Community (1952) and in 1957 was a founding member of the European Economic Community (EEC; later succeeded by the European Union).

The Paris treaty left unresolved the most thorny and difficult territorial question, that of Trieste. Yugoslav troops had taken the city and its surroundings from the Germans in 1945, claimed the region (which was populated by both Italians and Slovenes) for Yugoslavia, and embarked on a large-scale purge in which thousands of Italians were killed and then dumped into deep caves. The Paris treaty divided the region into two zones: one, including the mostly Italian-speaking city of Trieste, administered by the Western Allies and the other by Yugoslavia. The divided region became a focus of Cold War tensions. Finally, in 1954, the city of Trieste and a narrow coastal strip to its north came under direct Italian rule, while the remainder of the region was ceded to Yugoslavia.

The economic miracle

Industrial growth

The republic enjoyed economic success for many years. Initial U.S. support, especially food, oil, and Marshall Plan aid, helped to rebuild basic industries, including steel. The government abandoned the controls that had existed under the Fascists and the attempts at autarky, and all parties and trade unions approved the “reconstruction” program of 1945–47. Prewar industrial production levels were regained by 1948, and production for the Korean War (1950–53) provided further stimulus to growth. Italy became fully integrated into European trade and took an increasingly active part in Middle Eastern oil exploration and engineering development. Until 1964 (and in particular in the boom years of 1958–63) the country enjoyed an “economic miracle,” with industrial growth rates of more than 8 percent per year. Its most prominent industries, still in the northwestern industrial triangle, produced fashionable clothing (especially shoes), typewriters, refrigerators, washing machines, furniture, plastics, artificial fibres, sewing machines, inexpensive motor scooters (the Vespa and the Lambretta), and cars (from economical Fiats to luxury makes such as Maserati, Lamborghini, and Alfa Romeo). Italian firms became famous for their combination of elegant design and inexpensive production techniques. An extraordinary network of superhighways was constructed across Italy. The country was transformed in less than two decades from a largely agricultural backwater into one of the world’s most dynamic industrial nations. Economic success gave politicians additional resources to maintain their political support.

The postwar recovery and subsequent expansion benefited from a stable currency from 1948 onward and from Italy’s cheap access to raw materials, especially Middle Eastern oil. The dynamic policies of Enrico Mattei, president of ENI (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi, the state-owned energy group), were central to this development. The petroleum company AGIP (Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), which became a division of ENI in 1953, discovered natural gas in the Po valley and sold it at low prices to industry. Labour was inexpensive, as rural migrants flooded into the cities, trade unions were weak and politically divided until the late 1960s, regulatory agencies were even weaker, and taxes were low and easily avoidable. All this encouraged investment, especially as businessmen could borrow cheaply from state-owned banks and credit institutes. The IRI, founded under Mussolini in 1933, continued to dominate much of the economy, including not only heavy industry but also telephone service, air transport, and highway construction. The “economic miracle,” therefore, did not rest on market principles alone; government agencies played a vital role in it.

Land reform

In agriculture the major postwar change was the land reform laws of 1950, which made it possible for land reform agencies to expropriate large, badly cultivated estates, mostly in southern or central Italy, improve them, and sell them off to new peasant owners. The aim was to create a settled society of peasant cultivators, but this was achieved only in a few areas, because normally there was not enough land to go around: only 117,000 families actually acquired farms. Landless peasants moved abroad or to the cities instead. A major consequence of land reform, however, was that the reform agencies—run by central politicians in Rome—became economically dominant in many rural areas, controlling, among other things, land allocation, loans, and improvement grants. They thus undermined the traditional power of local landowners and became transmission belts for the political patronage of the Christian Democrats, especially in the south. Mechanization and modernization gradually replaced many of the traditional jobs in the Italian countryside. Seasonal women rice workers disappeared from the north, as did most day labourers and sharecroppers. Smaller, well-managed farms prospered, in part through EEC subsidies, and rural towns grew.

The south

The major economic problem was still the relatively underdeveloped south, where there was little industry and where per capita income in 1950 was half that of northern Italy. Initial policy stressed land reform and irrigation. For a while it seemed as if southerners were taking control of their own destiny for the first time since the Risorgimento. The huge, organized land occupation movements that swept across the south in 1949 and 1950 involved hundreds of thousands of landless peasants and politicized a whole generation. But the state intervened, sometimes lethally, to end the occupations on behalf of the powerful landowners. Because the land reforms that followed the occupations actually transferred little land to the peasantry and left many of the south’s inequities intact, millions of young men and women decided to migrate to the north.

The special Southern Development Fund (Cassa per il Mezzogiorno), established in 1950, financed roads, schools, electrification, water provision, and land reclamation. After 1957 it began to invest in industrial development as well, helped by a government policy that directed the expansion of state firms southward and by credit and tax breaks for private investors. Other agencies were founded to develop specific sectors. Promising areas of the south were selected for industrial development, and key plants were built there, together with the necessary infrastructure. The result was the establishment of a number of large, capital-intensive plants—for example, steelworks and heavy engineering at Taranto and oil refineries at Porto Torres—that were hugely expensive, often produced nonmarketable goods, and employed little local labour. These factories quickly became known as “cathedrals in the desert.” Although a few areas did take off (notably the Puglian coast north of Bari), the industrialization policy soon faced widespread criticism. Northerners resented having to pay for it, and southerners could see little benefit, especially as small firms received few incentives. The environmental costs were also enormous. Funding was gradually shifted, therefore, to subsidizing labour costs—especially social security contributions—and training and, by the 1980s, to making selective grants available for small and medium projects. The fund spent $20 billion between 1950 and 1980, but it did not industrialize southern Italy. Southern unemployment remained at three times the northern rate, and wages were still 40 percent below the national average.

The south did benefit, however, from some of the fund’s original activities, such as providing decent roads, clean water, much improved health services, and secondary schools, as well as eradicating malaria. It also received many state welfare benefits—often derived from friendly politicians in need of votes—and subsidies to agriculture. The social impact of automobiles, television, and processed foods was as great in southern Italy as elsewhere. The south also benefited from emigrants’ remittances as large-scale migration to western Europe and the northern cities resumed from 1950 onward. More than three million people, mostly able-bodied young men, left the south between 1955 and 1970. Some rural areas became seriously depopulated, whereas Rome and many of the northern cities virtually doubled in size, with the immigrants being crowded into bleak housing estates on the outskirts or into improvised shantytowns.

Italy from the 1960s

Beginning in the 1960s, Italy completed its postwar transformation from a largely agrarian, relatively poor country into one of the most economically and socially advanced countries of the world. One consequence of these changes was that migration from the south slowed after 1970 and, by the 1980s, even reversed, as jobs became scarcer in northern Italy and northern Europe. Other demographic, economic, technological, and cultural changes transformed Italian daily life and fueled social unrest. After the Cold War ended in 1989, pressures for political and economic reform, European economic unification, and globalization exposed Italy to a new range of challenges.

Demographic and social change

In general, population growth in Italy had slowed dramatically by the 1960s. The birth rate in the north had already been low in the postwar years and dropped below replacement level in the 1970s in most northern and central regions. Even in the south, birth rates fell sharply after 1964. By 1979 there were only 670,000 live births in all of Italy and by 1987 some 560,000. Italians had one of the lowest birth rates of any industrial country by the 1990s, and there was a growing tendency toward families having only one child and adults remaining single.

The reasons for the dramatic decline in births are complex. Contraception became readily available after 1971, and most Italians were now urbanites living in apartments and thus not in need of a large number of children to help till the soil. Women were now better-educated. Girls in general began going to secondary schools only in the 1960s, and by 1972 there were a quarter-million female graduates. They could now pursue satisfying careers or at least readily find gainful employment that gave them financial independence from men and alternatives to lives as homemakers and mothers. In 1970, following a campaign led by the Radical Party and opposed by the church and Christian Democrats, Italy’s first divorce law was passed. It was confirmed in a nationwide referendum (called by the Christian Democrats) in May 1974 by 59.1 percent of the voters—a real victory for secular groups against church and Christian Democratic dominance of society. In 1975 many antiquated provisions in family law were altered or abolished, and in 1981 another referendum confirmed by 67.9 percent of the vote the 1978 law permitting abortion. Meanwhile, civil marriage became more common (almost 12 percent of all marriages by 1979), as did unmarried cohabitation.

Legal contraception, divorce, and abortion provided dramatic evidence of a more secularized society. Regular church attendance fell sharply, from about 70 percent in the mid-1950s to about 30 percent in the 1980s. The membership of Catholic Action fell to about 650,000 by 1978, about one-fourth of its figure in 1966, and in the late 1960s Catholic trade unions allied with their erstwhile Communist rivals. Broadcasting in 1976 ceased to be a state monopoly dominated by the Christian Democrats. Furthermore, many church-controlled charities, especially at the local level, were taken over by regional governments in 1977 and 1978 and run as part of the state welfare system by political appointees. Although the Christian Democrats still held most government posts, Italy by the 1980s was indeed markedly “de-Christianized,” as Pope John Paul II said. In 1985 a new concordat that recognized many of these changes was ratified by the Vatican and (significantly) a government led by the Socialist Bettino Craxi. Roman Catholicism ceased to be the state religion, religious instruction in schools became voluntary, and the state stopped funding priests’ salaries.

Economic stagnation and labour militancy in the 1960s and ’70s

After 1963, when the Socialist Party entered government, an increasing number of political appointments were made in the firms and agencies of the public sector, and trade unions became more powerful. Soon inflation began creeping up once again, as governments printed money to pay for higher wages and welfare. Many firms had to be rescued by the IRI at public expense, the balance of payments deteriorated, and the official economy began to slow down, although the black-market economy of domestic textile workers and self-employed artisans, among others, continued to flourish.

This economic slump led to the “hot autumn” of 1969, a season of strikes, factory occupations, and mass demonstrations throughout northern Italy, with its epicentre at Fiat in Turin. Most stoppages were unofficial, led by workers’ factory committees or militant leftist groups rather than by the (party-linked) trade unions. The protests were not only about pay and work-related matters but also about conditions outside the factory, such as housing, transport, and pensions, and they formed part of a more general wave of political and student protest, including opposition to the Vietnam War.

The stoppages forced employers to grant large pay raises—at least 15 percent—and factory councils were set up in nearly all major plants. Often, migrant urban newcomers were at the head of the struggles. In 1970, legislation—the Statute of the Workers—ratified these developments and established rights never before codified in law. In 1975 most pay scales were indexed to inflation on a quarterly basis for wage and salary earners, thus guaranteeing the big pay raises of the previous few years. Jobs too were virtually guaranteed in the official economy, and trade unions became influential on a host of planning bodies. The firing of workers became extremely difficult in many sectors.

Labour militancy continued throughout most of the 1970s, often led by unofficial “autonomous” unions. Many firms therefore chose to restructure themselves into smaller units employing part-time or unofficial workers on piece rates, who could be dismissed easily and did not enjoy guaranteed wages. This was particularly true in the areas of textile production and light engineering. Unemployment rose sharply, especially among the young. By 1977 there were one million unemployed people under age 24. Inflation continued, aggravated by the increases in the price of oil in 1973 and 1979. The budget deficit became permanent and intractable, averaging about 10 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), higher than any other industrial country. The lira fell steadily, from 560 lire to the U.S. dollar in 1973 to 1,400 lire in 1982.

Student protest and social movements, 1960s–1980s

Student protests in Italy had also begun to take off in 1967, and the movement continued right through the 1970s. Universities, from Pisa to Turin to Trento, were occupied, lecturers and schoolteachers were challenged in the classroom, and alternative lifestyles began to dominate youth culture. A whole generation was radicalized. Students challenged both the church and the Communist Party, as well as the ubiquitous consumer society and the traditional power of the family. One of the slogans of the movement was “I want to be an orphan.” However, after an initial phase of creativity and democratization, the movement fell under the shadow of various small and ideological groupings who often used violence to communicate their message.

A new group of student movements emerged in 1977, known collectively as autonomia (“autonomy”). The best-known of these, Autonomia Operaia (“Worker Autonomy”), took a more violent approach. Other branches of the movement, such as those calling themselves “Metropolitan Indians,” were more creative and interesting. This time, the movement saw the traditional left as an enemy. Trade union leaders were shouted down and attacked. Ritualistic and violent demonstrations occurred in 1977, and some of the followers of the movement carried guns. The state arrested most of the leaders of the movement in 1979, while others fled abroad to escape trial. The autonomia reemerged in the 1980s and addressed environmental issues; squatted in vacant buildings, partly to protest the shortage of affordable housing; and set up alternative spaces known as “social centres.”

The feminist movement also invigorated society in the mid-1970s, making its arrival in Italy later than in most other Western countries. Feminists challenged the rigid Catholic morals of society and a legal system that gave women little defense against male oppression, rape, or even murder. The feminists also challenged the male dominance of politics right across the spectrum and even within the far-left political movements. The great victories in the referendums of the 1970s and ’80s on divorce and abortion would have been impossible without the agitation of the feminist movement.

Even the church began to open up to social and cultural change. The Second Vatican Council (1962–65), called by the reformist Pope John XXIII and implemented by his successor Pope Paul VI, provided a framework for the partial liberalization and democratization of the church. This process of liberal reform and the hopes that it raised for a transformation of the church declined, however, with the succession of the more conservative Pope John Paul II in 1978.

Terrorism

When economic, social, and political stability suddenly collapsed after 1969, one of the most alarming results was terrorism. Initially, neofascist groups backed and armed by some members of the security services carried out most acts of violence. They began planting bombs and derailing trains as part of a “strategy of tension” to undermine the labour advances of 1969–72 and encourage a right-wing coup. The “strategy of tension” began in earnest with a series of bombings in Milan and Rome in December 1969. In a Milan bank, a bomb killed 16 people and wounded more than 90. Initial police suspicion fell upon the far left, especially the anarchists. One anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli, died in mysterious circumstances after “falling” from a fourth-floor window of Milan’s central police station. Another anarchist, Pietro Valpreda, was arrested and charged with the Milan bomb attack. The Valpreda and Pinelli cases split Italy and radicalized large sectors of the student and workers movements. Many on the right continued to believe the version put out by the police and the state, while vast swathes of liberal opinion saw the affair as a mixture of conspiracy and cover-up. The inability of the state to find or prosecute those responsible (the eighth trial relating to the case began in 2000 and eventually ended in acquittal) only increased the disaffection with the authorities. Meanwhile, evidence emerged—which the police had ignored—that suggested that neofascists had planted the bombs with the active support of sectors of the Italian secret services. Valpreda was not acquitted until the 1980s and spent three years in jail awaiting trial. The Pinelli case was never resolved. The “strategy of tension” continued until 1984. The most deadly incident occurred in August 1980, when a bomb placed in a crowded waiting room at a Bologna railway station killed 85 people. Neofascists were later convicted of planting the bomb.

By the mid-1970s left-wing terrorism had begun to attract many young people unhappy with U.S. foreign policy, the failures of centre-left governments, and the Communists’ recent collaboration with the Christian Democrats. It was carried on by hundreds of former militant students and unemployed workers in a host of small groups. The “red” terrorists began by kidnapping factory supervisors for brief periods of time. Soon they began kidnapping and killing politicians, judges, and journalists. The “red” terrorists were relatively popular on the far left at first, but after 1977–78 the extra-parliamentary movement began to distance itself from them. The best-known organization, the Red Brigades, kidnapped and murdered former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978; for 55 days the Red Brigades held him in Rome as Italy held its breath. Since then a series of mysteries have emerged over secret service blunders and possible complicity with the Red Brigades. After Moro’s murder the police were reorganized and given special powers, the courts gave captured terrorists every incentive to provide evidence, and by 1981–82 the terrorist threat was greatly reduced.

Politics in the 1970s and ’80s

The political system survived with the assistance of the Communists, whose trade unions had helped to restrain wage claims after 1972 and who took a firm line against terrorism. In the face of the twin crises of the economy and terrorism, as well as the example of the recent military coup d’état in Chile that had toppled a Marxist government, the Communist Party, led by Enrico Berlinguer, adopted a policy in 1973 that he called the “historic compromise.” It entailed more or less formal alliances between the Christian Democrats and the Communists for the good of the country. The Communist Party won 34.4 percent of the vote and 228 seats in the Chamber of Deputies in 1976. However, Berlinguer’s “historic compromise” alienated many Communist supporters. Although the Communists never actually joined a coalition government, they supported (mainly by abstaining during votes of no confidence) ones led by the Christian Democrats from 1976 to 1979 and were given several key institutional posts, including speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. The Communists also accepted Italy’s membership in NATO. This period saw the elaboration of networks that spread patronage across the political system. It was these corrupt networks that were to cause a political crisis when they were exposed in the 1990s. Communist cooperation ended, however, in 1979 as international tensions increased, and in the elections of that year the party’s vote declined to 30.4 percent. After 1979 the Communists went into opposition again. By 1987 their share of the national vote had declined to about one-fourth.

Governments in the 1980s were usually four- or five-party coalitions in which the smaller parties played a more significant role than hitherto. The Christian Democrats, weakened by secularization, factional disputes, and successive scandals, also saw their vote decline from 38.3 percent in 1979 to 32.9 percent in 1983. In 1981–82 the Christian Democrats had to give up the prime ministry temporarily, for the first time since 1945. The forceful Socialist leader, Craxi, was prime minister from 1983 to 1987.

Socialists, in fact, secured many key posts in the 1980s, not only in government but also in economic agencies, broadcasting, and health services. The Socialist vote rose, but only to 11.4 percent in 1983 and to 14.3 percent in 1987. Disputes among and within the leading parties over the allocation of jobs and resources became more prolonged and often paralyzed effective government. Public debt rose to unsustainable levels. All this fueled popular resentment of partitocrazia, increasingly frequent corruption scandals, and the clandestine influence of Masonic or other shadowy pressure groups. The system could no longer deliver the patronage that once sustained it, and the state-dominated economy was falling behind those of other European countries.

The 1980s were also a decade of a general “withdrawal” (il riflusso) from politics and political activism after the upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s. All the parties and unions began to lose members, and election turnouts dropped. Protest movements attracted far fewer people than in the previous two decades. The ideologies that had held the Cold War system together—communism and anticommunism, fascism and antifascism—began to lose their appeal.

While even the Communists had accepted Italian membership in NATO in the 1970s, Italy frequently stood apart from U.S. overseas military actions from the Vietnam War onward. The continuing strength of the Roman Catholic Church in Italian society and the power of the Communist Party made active participation in “American” wars a political impossibility. Only after the Cold War did the Italian army actually participate in a NATO military intervention, with its involvement in the conflict in Kosovo in 1999.

Regional government

During the 1970s, elected regional assemblies and governments, which had previously existed only in the five outlying regions given special powers at various times (Sicily, Sardinia, Friuli–Venezia Giulia, Trentino–Alto Adige, and Valle d’Aosta), were finally set up throughout Italy, as the constitution had required. They acquired extensive devolved powers of legislation and administration, especially over agriculture, health, social welfare, and the environment. Many national agencies were dissolved in 1978, and their powers were allocated to the regions. In 1984 even the Southern Development Fund was abolished and its planning and investment powers transferred to a complex set of institutions, including the southern regional governments. Elections were held at five-year intervals, and after 2000 the president of each region was elected directly under a new law.

The effects of regionalism were profound. The regions became the main bodies responsible for welfare and for organizing the health services, which, in turn, decreased the influence of central politicians. (The political nature of appointments to these services in the regions, however, often drew much criticism.) In the north politicians became more conscious of regional interests and more intent on running their own affairs without interference from Rome. This was less true in the south, where continuing poverty ensured a steady need for subsidies from the central government. Conflicts began to emerge between local and national interests, especially in the large and rich regions of the north.

The economy in the 1980s

Economic growth revived in the mid-1980s, once terrorism had ended and the 1979 oil crisis had subsided. In autumn 1980 Fiat laid off more than 20,000 workers in Turin, and the unions’ protest strike quickly collapsed. The long season of protest that began in 1969 was finally at an end. Other employers followed Fiat’s example, and the power of trade unions went into decline. Big industry began to slump all over Italy but especially in the industrial northwest. Historic factories, linked to mass production and class struggle, closed or scaled down their operations. A 1985 referendum markedly reduced the indexation of wages, despite a strong Communist campaign against this action. However, northern Italy prospered in the financial boom years of the middle and late 1980s, helped by the low price of oil, and people spoke of a “new economic miracle.”

The Italian economy began to develop along new lines. In central and northeastern Italy—collectively known as the “third Italy,” alongside the less-developed south and the northwest, with its older industries and financial centres—small businesses flourished. These firms mainly produced quality goods for export and were often family-run. New industrial districts in these regions specialized in particular products, from taps to ties. New industries, such as fashion, began to replace traditional businesses in the northern cities. Milan became one of the world’s fashion capitals during the 1980s, bringing in billions of lire in business and advertising. With the diversification of the media at the end of the 1970s, private television took off under the influence of a dynamic entrepreneur, Silvio Berlusconi.

However, serious problems persisted. Budget deficits remained large and, given the political system, untackled. By 1989 the accumulated national debt exceeded the annual GDP. The economy continued to depend heavily on decentralized, “unofficial” work done by casual workers in small firms and service industries (the so-called black-market economy), as well as on a handful of successful international entrepreneurs. The south, moreover, did not participate fully in the country’s economic recovery, aside from pockets of growth in Puglia and Abruzzi. The rise in oil prices in the 1970s and the world steel glut devastated industry in the south except for a few areas of light engineering and textile production. In December 1992 the system of “extraordinary incentives” was abolished, just as welfare payments were being reduced and state industries privatized. The south, however, maintained a thriving black-market economy supported partly by organized crime activity. As emigration diminished and mass education expanded, living standards began to rise in line with, but always well behind, the more affluent north. The most worrying aspect of the southern economy was, as ever, youth unemployment, particularly in poverty-stricken cities such as Naples, Palermo, and Reggio di Calabria.

Public services remained an economic and political quagmire and a target of growing public resentment. Despite centres of excellence, the state’s postal, transport, health, legal, and financial services were top-heavy with bureaucracy, inefficient, and corrupt, and they cost Italy’s citizens hundreds of hours each year in (often pointless) queuing and interminable document collection. Most attempts to reform the system confronted massive resistance from well-organized trade unions armed with contracts protecting their members. It was almost impossible to dismiss a civil servant, and the role of political patronage in public hiring only complicated matters.

Italy had some of the best state nurseries in the world and some of the worst secondary schools. Its universities were full of students who rarely saw their lecturers or actually finished their courses. Not only did Italians pay more taxes than most other western Europeans, but the services they received in return were often comparable to those of eastern Europe or the world’s less-developed countries. Still, some benefited from this system—above all, those working within it or those able to avoid tax through corruption or inefficiency. For the vast majority of ordinary Italians, however, their daily dealings with the state brought frustration and anger. Some of this anger was to explode in the crisis of the 1990s.

The fight against organized crime

Organized crime dominated whole regions politically, socially, and economically by the 1980s. In Campania and Naples the Camorra controlled whole swaths of the urban landscape and the underground economy. Several politicians were linked to the Camorra when it siphoned off huge sums of state relief funding after the 1980 earthquake. The ’Ndranghetta organization in Calabria specialized in kidnappings and drug smuggling. In Puglia the Nuova Sacra Corona held sway, while the Mafia dominated Sicily. In Sardinia, bandits continued to operate in some regions, and, although anti-kidnapping laws had been somewhat effective, high-profile kidnappings dominated the news for months.

In addition, organized crime used violence to block enforcement of environmental protection laws and the establishment of public parks (which reduced opportunities for illegal construction) in Sicily and Sardinia in particular. Throughout the south, illegal construction was rife, and successive government amnesties—the last in 1994—further encouraged these builders. It was only after 1996 that the state began to act seriously against illegal construction, and it demolished houses and villas in natural parks in Sicily and Rome.

During the mid-1980s the state and civil society began to move, finally, against the hegemonic control of organized crime. After a series of high-profile Mafia assassinations of major political and institutional figures, above all prefect-general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa (and his wife) in Palermo in 1982, local elites began to evolve a strategy for combating the Mafia. A key Mafia figure, Tommaso Buscetta, turned state’s evidence in 1984 in defiance of the organization’s code of silence. Buscetta was the first to provide detailed information on the workings and plans of the Mafia. His testimony led to hundreds of arrests of key Mafia leaders and henchmen. Soon other mafiosi turned state’s evidence that helped prosecutors win convictions of important Mafia bosses. In addition, the Mafia families became involved in a damaging internal war in the 1980s that left more than 1,000 dead. Finally, there were moves from within the Christian Democratic Party itself against the Mafia after the murder in 1980 of the Christian Democratic Sicilian regional president Piersanti Mattarella, a traditional politician who had decided to lead a campaign against corruption in Sicily. The state passed strong anti-Mafia laws for the first time, and several trials in 1986 condemned hundreds of mafiosi to long prison sentences.

The Mafia took its revenge in devastating yet counterproductive fashion. In 1992 Judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who had both presided over anti-Mafia trials, were killed in horrific bomb attacks that left another nine people (bodyguards and relatives) dead. These murders galvanized the anti-Mafia movement. Even parliament—which had been stalled on the election of a new president, leaving Italy in a sort of power vaccum—came out of its stupor to elect Oscar Luigi Scalfaro in the aftermath of the Falcone bombing.

Beginning in 1993, authorities arrested several remaining key Mafia figures. Corruption investigations in the early 1990s permitted the prosecution of previously immune political figures who had links to the Mafia. In 1993 seven-time prime minister Guilio Andreotti was charged with collusion with the Mafia, a move that shook the political system to its foundations, although Andreotti was later absolved after a long and dramatic trial. Giancarlo Caselli continued the work of Falcone and Borsellino. Leoluca Orlando, an anti-Mafia campaigner, was elected mayor of Palermo in 1993 and 1997 with huge majorities. The city and the region began to stabilize, although no one believed that the Mafia had been entirely defeated. In Naples as well, the judges began to break down the powerful Camorra organizations, which were engaged in a bloody internal civil war that had left hundreds of young people dead. Leading politicians and Camorra bosses were arrested and charged.

In the late 1990s, however, the Mafia appeared to be making something of a comeback, although it seemed to have abandoned the tactics of direct confrontation with the state. The right—and in particular the new party called Forza Italia (“Go Italy”), led by Silvio Berlusconi—made continual attacks on anti-Mafia judges and the use of supergrass evidence (ex-mafiosi who turn state’s evidence) , especially after leading members of Forza Italia itself were implicated in Mafia corruption. These attacks resulted in the ouster of one of the most prominent anti-Mafia judges, Giancarlo Caselli, in 1999. These events suggested a return to previous patterns of government noninterference, albeit much less overt than in the past.

Italy at the turn of the 21st century

Emergence of the “second republic”

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ended the Cold War pattern that had marked Italian politics since the 1940s. Meanwhile, in the wake of growing economic prosperity and the challenges of globalization, most Italians had come to resent the corrupt and costly system of patronage and the large state economic sector that hampered Italy’s competitiveness and tarnished its political culture. With the bankruptcy of Cold War ideologies and partitocrazia, the party system itself began to appear outdated, politicians experimented with new forms of organization and communication, and shifting alliances replaced the solid blocs of the Cold War world.

The end of the Cold War had an immediate impact on Italy’s two biggest parties. Ongoing scandals and the loss of anticommunist appeal brought a further decline in the popularity of the Christian Democrats, who won only 29.7 percent of the vote in the 1992 elections. Under its new leader, Achille Occhetto, the Communist Party adopted a more moderate program and, in 1991, even took a new name: the Democratic Party of the Left (Partito Democratico della Sinistra; PDS). In the same year, a small group of die-hard Communists split off to form the Communist Refoundation Party (Partito della Rifondazione Comunista; PRC), which became one of the more important small parties, gaining about 5 percent of the vote in the national elections of 1994 and 1996. The collapse of communism in eastern Europe after 1989 undermined the communist subculture in Italy, and the PDS vote declined further to 16.1 percent in the 1992 elections. Nonetheless, the PDS remained the most important centre-left party.

Public protests against political corruption had little effect until 1992, when investigating magistrates in Milan began uncovering a series of bribery scandals. The city soon became known as “Bribesville” (Tangentopoli), and under “Operation Clean Hands” many leading politicians, civil servants, and prominent businessmen were arrested and imprisoned. Nearly all of Italy’s political parties were involved, but the Christian Democrats and the Socialists were the heart of the system. Craxi, the former prime minister, was eventually convicted on multiple charges and escaped imprisonment only by fleeing to Tunisia, where he died in 2000. By mid-1993 more than 200 deputies were under investigation, as were several former ministers, in a series of televised and closely followed trials. Protests about irregularities in the investigations fell on deaf ears at first but gradually began to pick up support.

Apart from the PDS, whose role in the corruption was limited, the main political parties dissolved in disgrace in 1993 and 1994, some to reappear under new names and with new leaders. The Christian Democrats became the Italian Popular Party (Partito Popolare Italiano; PPI), although some former Christian Democrats left the party to form several smaller Catholic-inspired political groupings. Members of the neofascist MSI (which had remained largely outside of the system of corruption) formed the new National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale; AN). The Socialists, so important to the political system since the 1960s, became irrelevant. It was an extraordinary, unprecedented reshaping of an entire political system.

In 1993 voters approved several referenda, later ratified by parliament, to alter the electoral law so that thenceforth three-fourths of deputies and senators would be elected from single-member constituencies rather than proportionally. Socialist Prime Minister Giuliano Amato (1992–93), whose government had been rocked by the corruption scandal, resigned shortly after the passage of the referendum, and President Scalfaro asked Carlo Azeglio Ciampi to step in and form a government to implement the electoral reforms and stabilize the economy. The collapse of the existing party system and national elections under the new law the following year marked the end of partitocrazia and the beginning of a new political order.

Economic strength

Economic problems increased sharply after 1991, as Italy felt the effects of a global recession that hit most European economies. In 1992 the budget deficit rose to more than 10 percent of GDP, and industrial production fell by 4 percent from 1992 to 1993. In September 1992 the lira was temporarily forced out of the European Monetary System, in which several nations had linked their currencies. In an effort to reduce the budget deficit, Amato’s government abolished the indexation of wages, rapidly decreased welfare spending (especially on health and pensions), and drew up a program to privatize leading state firms, although the privatizations were to occur only very gradually. Amato’s successor in 1993 as prime minister, Ciampi, was not a politician at all but a former governor of the Bank of Italy. Committed to privatization and continued government austerity, Ciampi was chosen to reassure investors and to prevent a disastrous flight from the lira. Although a prosperous country, Italy was still a junior partner in the new Europe and could no longer resist northern European pressure for financial prudence. Furthermore, Italy’s voters strongly supported the common European currency outlined in the 1991 Maastricht Treaty on the European Union, and Italy needed to implement a program of fiscal discipline to qualify for inclusion in the common currency zone. One facet of the new rigour was that the country’s deficit could not breach more than 3 percent of GDP.

During the late 1990s the economy resumed the strong growth of the previous decade, led by the flourishing design and manufacturing small-business networks of the centre and north. Living standards throughout Italy rose to the levels of the most advanced economies, although large pockets of youth unemployment and poverty remained, particularly in parts of the south and on the bleak peripheries of the northern cities. Immigrants from outside Italy also tended to have much lower living standards than Italians.

Italy participated in the Maastricht Treaty and all subsequent agreements on European political and economic union. The European Union remained far more popular in Italy than in many other European countries. Moreover, the strong desire of many Italians to participate in the common European currency enabled the centre-left government of Romano Prodi (1996–98) to pass a series of austerity budgets that dramatically reduced Italy’s chronic budget deficits. Under the Prodi government, privatizations began in earnest, and inflation was reduced to record lows. This fiscal discipline allowed Italy to meet the strict requirements for adoption of the common European currency, the euro, which replaced the lira as Italy’s unit of exchange on Jan. 1, 1999.

A new political landscape

While electoral reforms failed to produce the desired political stability after 1993, they nevertheless helped transform Italy’s political landscape from one of multiple national parties that formed shifting parliamentary coalitions to one of parties, often with a distinct regional basis, that formed electoral coalitions, which then often failed to withstand the rigours of parliamentary cooperation.

In the north, and especially in the Veneto and Lombardy, local or regional “leagues” had developed in the early 1980s to protest corrupt party rule by the central government in Rome, as well as high taxes, poor public services, organized crime (which they often blamed on southerners), and immigration (especially from Africa but later from Albania). These leagues united in 1991 to form a federation, the Northern League (Lega Nord). In 1992, when numerous Socialist and Christian Democratic leaders were being arrested and the Communists were seeking a new identity after the failure of state socialism in eastern Europe, the Northern League secured almost 20 percent of the northern vote in the parliamentary elections. Later it advocated a new constitution with a federal Italy divided into three autonomous republics that would have separate responsibility for everything except defense, foreign affairs, and monetary policy. The northern part of this system was to be known as “Padania.”

The decline of Italy’s major political parties as a result of the corruption scandals of the early 1990s created a political vacuum. The Northern League filled part of this vacuum, as did the “post-Fascist” National Alliance led by Gianfranco Fini, which in Rome and the mainland south became the party of continuing Italian patriotism as well as of continuing state subsidies and economic interventionism. Above all, the political vacuum was filled early in 1994 by media entrepreneur Berlusconi, who controlled three national commercial television channels, much of the press, and the highly successful A.C. Milan football (soccer) club. Berlusconi hastily founded an ad hoc political association, Forza Italia, with a message of populist anticommunism, and formed an equally ad hoc electoral alliance with the Northern League (in the north) and the AN (in the south). This loose right-wing coalition won a majority of about 50 seats in the Chamber of Deputies (although not in the Senate) in the March 1994 parliamentary election, the first held under the new electoral law.

Berlusconi, who became prime minister, had pledged to cut taxes, lower public spending, decentralize government, and generate a million new jobs. However, the new government—which had neofascist ministers for the first time since World War II, as well as a Northern League interior minister—was just as faction-ridden as previous governments. During huge protests against AN-led inheritance and pension reforms, the trade unions managed to mobilize more than a million people onto the streets of Rome. In July 1994 Berlusconi himself became the subject of anticorruption investigations that he was unable to halt. The allegations weakened Berlusconi’s government, as did his attempts to control the state-owned media, which not only had criticized the government but also competed directly with his privately owned media outlets. Berlusconi promised at various times to sell his television stations or leave them to be managed by a “blind trust,” but they continued to broadcast propaganda in his favour. Finally, in December 1994 the Northern League ended its alliance with Berlusconi, and his government fell.

Once again, President Scalfaro invited a banker to head the government, this time Lamberto Dini, the former chief executive of the Bank of Italy and previously Berlusconi’s treasury minister. In January 1995 Dini formed a government of nonpolitical “technocrats,” supported by the Northern League and by the left-wing parties in parliament (the losers in the 1994 elections). This new government, known on the right as the “turnabout” (ribaltone), reached a long-term agreement on pensions and limited the budget deficit. Dini’s government lasted until the spring of 1996, when President Scalfaro called for new parliamentary elections.

In the period of electoral alliances and unstable governments that followed the collapse of Italy’s party system—a period that became known as the “second republic”—the president assumed a more powerful role. Powers that the parties had previously exercised—such as the decision to dissolve parliament—rested increasingly with the president. Scalfaro adhered to his constitutional responsibilities in times of crisis, but his disquiet with aspects of the new populist right was clear, and he was often accused of favouring the centre-left at key moments.

Like the right-wing parties, a group of left-wing parties including the PDS had formed an electoral alliance. After the failure of this alliance in the 1994 elections, Massimo d’Alema assumed leadership of the PDS and began to build alliances with the centre. In 1995 Romano Prodi, a former Christian Democratic minister and former head of IRI, proposed to lead a new centre-left alliance known as L’Ulivo (“the Olive Tree”). Promising to enable Italy to adopt the euro and to reform the bureaucracy and civil service, Prodi won the support of the PDS and the other major left and centre parties. With a few exceptions, such as Milan, the left managed to take control of most important city governments in the 1990s. Some of these cities proved to be important laboratories of stable government and reform, including Venice under Massimo Cacciari, Rome under the Green Party’s Francesco Rutelli, and Naples under Antonio Bassolino.

Meanwhile, the bitterness inspired by Northern League leader Umberto Bossi’s “betrayal” of Berlusconi in 1994 kept the right divided in the north. Berlusconi went into the 1996 elections supported by some smaller Catholic parties and the AN but without the support of the Northern League, which did better than expected in the north. Encouraged by these results, the Northern League issued a symbolic declaration of independence for the northern “Republic of Padania.” However, polls showed that the vast majority of the league’s voters did not want complete separation, and the league, without the media power of Berlusconi behind it, began to lose ground.

At the same time, the division on the right in 1996 allowed the Olive Tree to win a surprise victory, and Prodi assumed the premiership. However, the Olive Tree coalition’s small majority in the lower house made it dependent on the cooperation of the Refounded Communists (the PRC). In October 1998 PRC dissatisfaction led to a narrow defeat in a confidence vote that forced Prodi to resign. D’Alema, leader of the Democrats of the Left (Democratici di Sinistra; DS), as the PDS had renamed itself, assembled a working majority and became prime minister.

D’Alema’s government continued the fiscal discipline of Prodi’s administration but with less conviction and under continual pressure from various allies. It remained unpopular in the country, while on the right the division and resentments of 1994 were beginning to subside. A new law regulated television time for all parties, but nothing was done about opposition leader Berlusconi’s huge media advantage. The left began to hemorrhage votes and, in a highly symbolic defeat, even lost “red Bologna” in 1999 to the centre-right after 50 years of communist city governments. Another heavy defeat followed in the European elections. D’Alema limped on until April 2000, when a new electoral alliance between Berlusconi, the Northern League, and the AN crushed the centre-left in regional elections. D’Alema resigned, and Giuliano Amato assumed leadership of a further weakened centre-left government, which fell in 2001 when Berlusconi led his centre-right coalition back into power and began his second tenure as prime minister, one of the longest in recent history.

In the contentious and close elections of 2006, Prodi returned to the national spotlight to lead his centre-left coalition against Berlusconi, whom he replaced as prime minister. Just 20 months later, in January 2008, Prodi lost a vote of confidence in the Senate and resigned once again. Italian Pres. Giorgio Napolitano called for the formation of an interim government, charged with revising the country’s problematic electoral law that had been pushed through parliament by Berlusconi just months before the 2006 elections. Many cited the law, which overturned changes to the electoral system made in the 1990s, as the reason for Prodi’s downfall. Attempts to form an interim government failed, however, and Napolitano dissolved parliament in February. In the national elections held in April, Berlusconi—heading a new party known as the People of Freedom (Popolo della Libertà; PdL)—clinched a third term as prime minister.

When an earthquake devastated the historic town of L’Aquila in April 2009, Berlusconi focused attention on the area by visiting victims of the temblor and relocating a Group of Eight summit to the city. His popularity suffered, however, as he became embroiled in a sex scandal involving a teenage model. Berlusconi took another hit in October 2009, when Italy’s Constitutional Court struck down a law that protected the prime minister from prosecution while in office. The ruling meant that Berlusconi could be tried on outstanding corruption and fraud charges, as well as other unrelated charges that would accrue over the following years. Italy’s economy sagged in 2009 as the global economic crisis drew the country into recession. The unemployment rate approached double digits throughout 2010, and disagreements between Berlusconi and former AN leader Gianfranco Fini triggered the departure of Fini and dozens of supporters from the PdL.

Fini retained his position as leader of the Chamber of Deputies, and, despite his differences with Berlusconi, Future and Freedom (Futuro e Libertà per l’Italia; FLI), the breakaway party that Fini formed, proved instrumental to Berlusconi’s political survival, as the embattled prime minister faced three votes of confidence in the latter half of 2010. In February 2011 Berlusconi was mired in yet another scandal when prosecutors alleged that he had solicited sex from an underage prostitute and had abused the powers of his office in the subsequent cover-up. That case was adjourned in April 2011, pending a review by Italy’s Constitutional Court. Berlusconi faced another confidence vote in June 2011 following crushing losses for the PdL in local elections. He survived that test, but the country’s ongoing political uncertainty, along with a host of economic factors, caused euro zone economic ministers to turn their attention to Italy’s public debt market. For more than a year, financial markets had responded with trepidation to the debt crisis that had escalated for the so-called “PIGS” (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) countries, as the EU and IMF called for the enactment of austerity measures in those countries and provided financial bailouts for Greece and Ireland, primarily to preserve the stability of the euro. Italy’s outstanding public debt, which approached €2 trillion, amounted to more than that of the four PIGS combined, causing some economists to label the country as “too big to fail.” In July 2011 the Italian legislature approved a basket of austerity measures, including massive budget cuts, in an attempt to calm markets and restore confidence in the Italian economy.

Immigration and foreign policy

The economic growth that had begun in the 1980s transformed Italy by the 1990s into a host country for immigration. Emigration from Italy and south-north internal migration had all but disappeared by the 1980s. From the mid-1970s onward, immigrants from all over the world, but in particular from North Africa, the Philippines, and eastern Europe, had begun to appear in the big cities. Most worked in the service sector or in small-time street trading. Italy took a long time to react to this trend, and immigration became a national crisis. By 2000 Italy had more than one million immigrants, many of whom found it difficult to procure documents for legal residence. Racism emerged in Italian society and politics, and immigrants were stereotyped as criminals, just as southern Italians had been in the 1960s. However, this cheap labour was essential to the Italian economy.

In 1993 Italy ratified the Schengen Treaty, which eliminated passport controls between its European member states and mandated rigorous controls for persons arriving from nonmember states. Italy implemented these controls and joined the Schengen zone in 1997. Because of its position at the edge of prosperous western Europe and, after 1997, of the exclusive Schengen zone, Italy played a frontier role in immigration, with immigrants every day attempting the perilous sea crossings from Albania and North Africa despite Italian authorities trying to stop them.

Economic dislocations after the Cold War brought massive immigration from Albania in particular, especially in 1990 and 1991. Italy sent troops to Albania twice at times of crisis, and the huge boatloads of Albanians arriving on the coast of Puglia became symbols of pressures that some Italians perceived as a threat. Only the first Albanians were welcomed. Thereafter Italy adopted a policy of expulsion and began nightly patrols up and down the coast.

The end of the Cold War and growing European political and economic integration also had combined to erode Italy’s long-standing resistance to overseas military action, as the interventions in Albania demonstrated. In 1999 D’Alema faced the Kosovo crisis on his doorstep, and, in contrast with Italy’s complete inaction during the four preceding years of war in the Balkans, Italy permitted the use of its bases to bomb targets in Yugoslavia. This intervention, however, proved unpopular in Italy, both on the left and among Catholics.

Italy entered the 21st century far richer and more developed than it had been a hundred years previously. Many problems remained, however, including continuing political instability and corruption, the historic but persistent economic and cultural divisions between the north and the south, and the new challenges of immigration and European economic and political unification. These challenges dominated Italy’s political and economic agenda early in the new century.